


slice-of-life AU

by xiilnek



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe, Domestic, Other, Slice of Life, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 11:51:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiilnek/pseuds/xiilnek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere, some<i>when</i> after the epilogues we got, something like this happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Valentine's Day is for suckers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This day isn't really turning out like Eddie'd hoped.

Eddie watched, glumly, as smoke rose from the pan in front of him. The - well, maybe he could still call it a pie - was not exactly heart-shaped. It was not exactly round. Splotches of red leaked through the crust in places.

Heels clicked on the floor behind him. A presence loomed over his shoulder. "Not one word," he said, sounding forlorn even to himself.  
  
There was a careful silence, and Eddie could feel himself being studied. "You said Val-an'-Times Day wasn't very important."  
  
"Well... well I..." Eddie huffed and flailed a little, a chunk of dough flying off the spatula and sticking to the ceiling. "I just wanted it to be _special_ , that's all."

Roland brushed past Eddie and leaned in to study the not-pie again, looking fascinated. "I thought you knew how to cook."  
  
"Spaghetti-O's! Toast! Mac'n cheese! I sure as hell can't bake. Apparently. Hey, how about you? Got a professional chef lurking in that deep, dark head of yours?"

Roland opened his mouth, looked like he _wanted_ to say yes, then shook his head. "I doubt even a king's chef could fix this." He poked at a bubble on the pie's crust with a curious finger.  It deflated.  
  
"Hey!" Eddie smacked at the offending hand, then sighed and sagged back against Roland. "What am I going to _do_? I can't give her this."

He felt Roland shrug, his hand rising to rest on Eddie's waist.  "Collect some flowers. Dance a little." There was a moment of consideration, while Roland's thumb began to rub back and forth over Eddie's side. "Make her laugh. You love her, and she you. The day'll be special if you make it so."

"You really think so?" Eddie let his head fall back, looking up at Roland's face. Roland looked back evenly, seeming faintly amused.

"Yes." He patted at Eddie's hip and stepped back, looking over at the stove. "I wouldn't try to serve that, though. Food poisoning would probably ruin the moment." 

Eddie was surprised into laughter. "Oh, eat me." He studied Roland, who by then had mostly made his way back to the kitchen doorway. "Sure you don't want to join us?"

Roland shook his head. "This is your day, and hers. Not mine. Besides, she's been missing you."

"Been missing you, too."  Eddie slunk over, wrapping his hands around Roland's hips and pulling him forward. Roland let him. "Offer's open, if you change your mind." He leaned further in, feeling Roland shift his weight as their groins pressed together. "Tonight, even if you're not feeling into, you know..." he waved a hand, descriptively. "...the rest of it."

"I'll keep it in mind" Roland said, watching his hand run across Eddie's shoulder.

"Hmm. Yeah." Eddie smiled a little, gently. "Tomorrow night, maybe. Come on, help me clean up this disaster before Oy eats it and explodes, or something."  He led Roland back to the counter and they moved around each other in easy silence, hands brushing.  


	2. real Happily Ever Afters take work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> slightly schmoopy adventures in healthy communication

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning for brief mention of Eddie's relationship with Roland being kind of incest-y. I didn't add it to the tags because that's not what the story's about, but it _is_ mentioned.

"It's like he's trying so hard to give us time together that he's just... taking himself out of it!" Eddie throws his hands up in the air, not aiming to do anything with them but needing to do _something_ , and turns to Susannah. "Why would he do that?"

She fluffs up her pillow, pulls it behind her, and looks up at him. "Maybe you'd do better asking him that. Besides, I thought we were giving him time to work whatever-it-is out."

Eddie sighs, runs a hand over his jaw, then plops down beside her. She pulls the blanket back, and he slides his legs and bare feet underneath. "We were. We are. I just... I don't know, I don't think this is one that's going to be solved with time, you know?" He looks over at her, then puts a hand over hers and starts rubbing at the backs of her knuckles. "What do you think?"

She turns her hand and interlaces their fingers, watching their hands fit together while her mind works it over. "I think whatever this is, it's been going on almost a month. I think I'm worried about him. I think I've been very busy lately, and I miss you. Both of you."

"I tried to tell him that!" Eddie throws his hands up again, forgetting that one of those hands is linked to Susannah's. He frowns at this reluctant hand, briefly confused, and she smiles.

"He wouldn't listen!" Eddie continues. "It's like he didn't even hear it!"

"It may be we both need to tell him."

"You think so? You think he'd listen?"

"You think he'd have a choice?"

"I like the way your mind works." He leans across her, turns off the lamp, and takes a moment to kiss her before settling back on his side of the bed. "Tomorrow, you think?"

"Tomorrow. I'd like to get this worked out before Jake comes over this weekend."

_\--------------------------_

Eddie frowns, looks to Susannah. Now that they're here, he's not sure how to start. Roland follows his gaze, clearly confused, maybe a little concerned.

"Roland, honey," Susannah starts. She reaches across the table, takes his hand. "We miss you. _I_ miss you."

"I don't understand you." Roland shakes his head, curls his fingers around hers. "Has something happened?"

"You tell us," Eddie says, sitting on Roland's other side. "What's going on with you? You keep disappearing whenever you're in the same room with both of us for more than five minutes. It's enough to make a guy feel a little unloved."

"Eddie," Roland turns more fully toward Eddie, looking genuinely worried now. "Never think it."

"At least Eddie's been getting _some_ time with you. I hardly see you at all. Is it something I did? It's not the work, is it?"

Roland frowns at her, gaze going distant, lips parted. After a moment he breathes out, bows his head, runs a hand over his jaw. "Have I really handled things so abysmally?" It's a murmur, clearly meant more for himself than for either of them.

"Yeah, kind of." Eddie, of course, answers Roland anyway. "But we're willing to forgive if you just..." Eddie trails off, spreading his hands. "Just _tell us_ what's going on!"

"I never meant to make you doubt. I only thought that the little spare time you've had should be spent together."

"That's very sweet of you, but did you ever think about what _we_ want?"

Roland frowns at Susannah, but it's not doubt. He's chewing it over, looking at the idea from every angle in that same focused, thorough way he looks over new pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and they both know him well enough to give him time. Roland rubs the back of his fingers across his lips, then slips his hand from Susannah's and pulls Eddie's toward it, pressing the two together. "A husband and wife who have such love as the two of you... I'd never come between that. Never in life."

"Oh _Roland_. Honey, no."

"So what, you're breaking up with us because... we love each other too much? What the hell, man?"

"No, Eddie, you're..." Roland reigns himself in, sighs, continues in a more even tone. "You're not understanding me."

"I understand you just fine. Maybe it's _you_ who's not understanding us. We love you. I don't know what that means for you, but for me it means you're... You're here. Not on the outside looking in. Not making yourself some big fucking martyr for something you think we want. You're _here_. You're here and you don't even know it, you poor bastard."

Roland stares.

"Think of it this way," Susannah says, taking pity. She leans forward, pulling Eddie's hand with her own. "Don't think of us as a married couple and you. Think of us as..."

"As one big married couple," Eddie finishes. "A married trio, if that works for you."

Roland looks dumbstruck for a second, then leans back, shaking his head. "That's not how it is between us."

Susannah squeezes Eddie's hand, knowing how stung he must be at that and wanting him to hold back, just a minute. "And why not?" Under other circumstances, the question could have been an angry one. She manages to make it something else, just simple curiosity.

He studies her a moment, sees the effort it took to make the question calm and even, then sighs.  "Never doubt that I love you," he says, looking first into her eyes, then Eddie's. "That hasn't changed, and I don't think it ever will." This is nothing they do not know, even though they might need to be reminded. It's a simple statement of fact, something to touch on before carrying on with the next topic.

"But my love for you is... different from yours for each other. You are man and wife, purely, completely. I, though - I've been your mentor, teacher, dinh, and even... even father to you, Eddie, by your own admission. There's something different about that. Something more distant. A father can't be close the way a marriage is close." He stops, frowning, watching to see if they get it now.

"Gee, don't know if that makes me the favorite son or not." Eddie catches Roland's look, grimaces. "Sorry." Eddie's still stung, trying to hit back. Roland knows that, and he lets it go.

"So you feel..." Susannah pauses, visibly trying to understand. The way Eddie's watching her heartens Roland, too. They're both listening. Good.

"You feel like you have to be separate," she continues. "But doesn't that get _lonely_?"

Eddie interrupts before Roland can answer her. "You don't have to, though. I mean, I get the whole father thing. It's a little weird, considering all the raunchy sex we've been having, but I get it. But why's that mean you have to set yourself apart? I don't know, it just sounds like... Like an excuse to me."

Now it's Roland's turn to listen, and Eddie can tell he's trying. You can say one thing for old long, tall, and ugly - when you call him on his bullshit, he doesn't waste much time denying it. He's looking down, frowning, thinking hard. A part of Eddie wants to reach out, comfort him, but he thinks maybe this is a conclusion Roland has to come to himself. He glances across at Susannah, sees she's leaning forward, eyes darting back and forth over Roland's face. He wonders if she's thinking the same thing, wanting to reach out but holding herself back. Hell, that's what this whole conversation is about, isn't it?

"When I'm with you, I feel..." It's a slow beginning, but a good one. Roland looks up at them, still frowning in thought. "I feel as if I _should_ hold myself back. As if the two of you should be the focus." He gives his head a quick shake, gaze resting on the center of the table, where Susannah and Eddie's hands are still linked. "And should you not be?"

He runs a finger over the side of Eddie's hand, then along Eddie's fingers toward Susannah's. "If I can help you both, give you some measure of peace, don't you deserve that much? Haven't I done enough?"

"Aw, jeez." Eddie glances at Susannah. As one, they pull their hands apart, closing them tightly over Roland's and linking them again. "Roland, I forgive you for, for me getting shot, if that's what this is about. For my... my death. If that's what you need to hear. If I knew this was still eating you, I would have said it a long time ago."

"So do I." Susannah's gaze pins Roland's. She means to make sure he hears what she's got to say. Really hears it. "I'd forgive you for everything you've ever done, if I thought that'd be enough. But it won't, will it?"

He frowns, tilts his head the barest degree. She puts her free hand on his arm. "It's over for _all_ of us, Roland. Even you. And my god, haven't you earned some peace?" He still doesn't quite have it, so she goes on. "If I'm going to have my little bit of Heaven, if this is it, I want you standing right here in this light with me. But first you've got to _let yourself have it_."

Roland stares. He bows his head.

"We're here, okay?" Eddie's voice is gentle, gentle as his fingers curled around the back of Roland's neck. "We're here, but you have to promise to try. Just try."

Roland looks up, opens his mouth. Pauses, breathes. Twists his hand and tightens his grip over brown fingers, over pale ones. "I do." He pauses, breathes, and looks straight into their faces. "I do so promise."


	3. prequel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I should probably rename this fic 'The Angst-ridden Domestic Adventures of a Retired Badass'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally written as its own story, one of the first Dark Tower fics I wrote after finishing my reread of the series. I've been thinking of it as a prequel to this story for a while, though, and with a little encouragement I figured fuck it, no one's paying attention anyway so I might as well. And if you are paying attention, well, I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. 
> 
> There are a couple concepts in this I've since played around with elsewhere. I worry sometimes about repeating myself, but maybe it's not a bad thing to be interested enough in certain questions to keep asking them.

"What the fuck is your problem?" These are the first words Eddie says to Roland, and they aren't unfounded. His tone, despite the words themselves, is calm, and Roland feels pride wash in among all the other emotions swimming in his gut. This Eddie might not have picked up a single gun in all his life, but his gunslinger's heart is the same. Roland knows it. He knows it very well.

"You've got ten seconds to answer, then I call the cops." When Roland looks up, Eddie's face is dark, his jaw set. That expression, too, is familiar.

By the time Roland answers, he's cut it dangerously close to the ten second deadline. "You look well. Healthy."

"What?" Eddie straightens, even leans away from Roland a little. This is clearly not the direction he'd been expecting this conversation to go. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Is this some sort of joke? Because I know jokes, asshole, and this sure as hell isn't one."

"I don't do jokes, Eddie." The gunslinger realizes his lips are pulling up at the corners, that he's started to smile. "You know that." It's easier to look in Eddie's face now, though Roland finds his eyes keep darting back toward Eddie's temple, over his hairline where the bandage had been.

Eddie gives him an odd look then, unsettled, the look of someone a little more exposed than they'd expected to be. Roland's heart lurches, and his throat tightens. Show a man despair, and then show him hope; the latter has ever been the more painful.   
  
"Look, did Suze put you up to this?" Eddie's hard, determined expression of a moment ago is long gone. "It's not really like her, but I'm wracking my brain here, and I don't know what else this could be. Unless you're just some random freak who gets his jollies following mostly-innocent guys like me off the street for no reason."   
  
"There was a reason." Roland's turned toward Eddie now, arm bent over the back of the bench. He studies Eddie with narrowed eyes, searching out the traces of that last unsettled look. "I think you know what it is."

"Oh, do I? You know, Roland, just because _you_ think everything's a lesson doesn't mean it's actually--" He stops, draws a breath, gaze going distant as he realizes what he's just said. "Goddamn. It's, It's like Christmas all over again, isn't it?  I mean, unless you're the spirit of Christmas Past here to tell me to live a good life or else. Hey- uh, man. Roland. You okay?"   
  
Roland straightens a little from where he's hunched over, lifts his head, evens out his breathing. "No. Yes." He breathes out, slowly, running a hand over his jaw.  "What happened at Christmas?"

Eddie eyes him cautiously, but decides not to argue. A distant part of Roland's brain reminds him that with Eddie a lack of argument is always temporary, but for now, Roland's just grateful.

"We'd been having dreams. Nothing too bad, just weird enough to make me think I was losing it. I probably _would_ have thought that, if Jake hadn't been-- look, you sure you're okay? Look like you're about to yak up a big technicolor yawn all over--"

"Stop. Hush, Eddie." Roland closes his eyes, shakes his head, and all he can think is that if he hears one more of those 'Eddie' phrases, one more moment of those words in that voice, he really _is_ going to vomit and he's not sure how their first meeting went from something so promising to this but he does know that is not the first impression he had expected to make.

"Just - take deep breaths, all right?" Well, the silence had lasted a moment. There's the barest hint of pressure on his back. A hand. Eddie's hand. Roland doesn't shudder, but it's close, and Eddie obviously feels something because the hand retreats. Eddie shifts closer. Close enough that Roland almost thinks he can feel Eddie's body heat.

"This is probably an awful idea - strike that, it _is_ awful, and I'm probably going to regret it, but... Do you have somewhere to stay?"

Roland looks up, nausea washed over with a bright burst of astonishment. Can it really be that easy?

His mind shows him sunlight winking off metal, wheels disappearing behind a tall ironwood doorway. _Wait!_

"You should ask Susannah before making an offer like that." Roland's gaze moves from Eddie's face to a signpost standing just in front of the street. He can't quite make out the letters, but he's fairly sure the numbers say 119.

"How..." From the warm space beside Roland, there comes a pause. A brief one, a part of Roland's mind predicts. "Look at me, would you!" There's honest frustration in that voice, and Roland straightens. Turns toward his old friend once more. "Cry pardon, Eddie. Ask your questions."

For a moment Eddie looks taken by surprise, maybe by the phrase, foreign to this world but familiar to Eddie, if Roland's reading this right. And he's almost sure that he is. Eddie recovers quickly, clearly getting used to the two levels his mind must be experiencing. Knowing and not. Roland has some experience with that concept, and pride tips a toe back into his emotional waters. Once he'd made up his mind, Eddie always did adapt quickly.

"How do you know about Suze?"   
  
"Why do you want me to tell you, Eddie? Would you have me lay each detail in front of you so you can rip them apart to convince me that I lie? That I've finally lost my senses?" Roland shakes his head, studying Eddie's eyes closely. "I won't help you fool yourself. Certainly not about something you already know."

Indignance. Something more than that, a hint of that hard, banked fury that sat at the core of him. Now, Roland was sure. Sure, and still oddly shaken. Every instant, every glance and gesture, every moment here was unlocking memories that, despite Roland's best efforts, had been shut away one by one. Most prominent of these memories was that glimpse of Eddie's truest self, that steel Roland had seen in him from the first.

"You're a dick, you know that?" Eddie leans forward, elbows on his knees. Covers his face with his hands. "And I bet I'm not the first one to tell you. So, what, this was just..." he waves a hand blindly through the air, miming nothing in particular. "...Meant to happen? Then why didn't I dream about it? Like last time?"

Roland looks away from the back of Eddie's head and over at the signpost. 119.  "I didn't think it was." He hesitates, eyes fixed in place. "I thought ka was done with me."

Eddie stares. Roland doesn't see it, but he can feel it. "Okay. Not a hundred percent sure what that means, but you are _definitely_ coming with me." He stands. Roland's arm is grabbed, and he lets himself be led.

"Just don't turn out to be a crazy axe-murderer, okay?" He glances back at Roland, then away. "Okay. Absolutely. Totally not inviting a stranger into your house so he can chop up everyone you care about. Good going, Eddie. "

"Don't worry," Roland replies, giving in to curiosity. "If I do, you can just shoot me."   
  
" _Shoot_ you?" Another glance backward at Roland as Eddie leads him over the walk-across. His grip hasn't loosened. "Are you kidding? I couldn't shoot the broad side of a barn."

"Do you truly say so?" It looks like Eddie really believes this. Every word. "Why?"  
  
"Do I look like an all-American patriot to you? One of those nutjobs who totes his rifle everywhere he goes on the off-chance today's the day the rebel forces attack? Come on."

He veers them toward a group of cartomobiles, slowing when he catches a look at Roland's frown. "Say, _you_ don't happen to be a gun-toting nutjob, do you?"  
  
Roland cranes his head to get a better look at their path. "Not in recent days, no." The old familiar weight on each hip feels so _near_. Almost real enough to touch. He studies the machines in front of him, instead of looking down.

"No?" The look Roland catches on Eddie's face from the corner of his eye is unsettled. Truly put off, for perhaps the first time in this conversation. "...Weird."

Eddie leads them to a motor-carriage that's brown, the fabric on the seats old and worn. Roland's knees almost touch the handle of the latched compartment in front of him.   
  
"Is it too far up? You can move it back if you want."

Roland stares at him.

"Oookay, or not." They spend the next few minutes in silence, bouncing gently though the wide street. Roland spends those minutes looking out the window, thinking of another silent, somber car ride in another world and wondering if Eddie's prepared for what might be found if he lets Roland into his home. If he himself is prepared for it. He wonders when children here finish their lessons, whether Eddie will open his front door onto a small blonde head bent over a table, whether the whole place will be silent. He's not prepared, not in the least. Not for anything.

"Instead of sitting through the most awkward car ride in history, how about you answer some questions like you said you would?" Eddie glances sidelong at him, looking only mildly curious, before returning his gaze to the street. "Or was that just an excuse to tell me off?"

"It was no excuse." Roland shakes his head. "As long as those questions aren't foolish."   
  
"Don't ask silly questions, you won't play silly games. Got it." The answer startles Roland, and he looks over at Eddie for a moment before sitting back in his seat.

"Okay," begins Eddie, frowning. "No questions about something I already know. Except I don't know what I know, so... Me asking what I can't ask about wouldn't fly, would it?" He looks back at Roland, his grin small and hopeful, and for a second Roland can't help but grin back, the twist of his lips faint but there.  He probably shouldn't be surprised that it was Eddie who drew this smile out of him, his first in what feels like a very long time. That's the way it always was before. Almost every time, his first real smile was Eddie's. Before that thought can get much purchase his stomach, traitorous thing, stirs again. It seems to do a squirming loop inside him and he leans a little forward, one elbow braced on a thigh. He breathes.

"First question." Eddie frowns. "Why do you keep looking like that? I mean, not that I don't welcome the chance to clean puke out of my car, but... You aren't about to keel over on me, are you?" Roland can't look at the concern on that face, can't, looks for a second at the old, threadbare floor between his feet and then closes his eyes.

"I'm not..." He sits back up, breathes, continues. "I'm not ill. I haven't been poisoned. I won't 'puke' in your car."

"Good," Eddie says, sounding like he means anything but. He's still frowning, eyes darting toward Roland every few seconds. "Poison wasn't even on my list of 'things that could fuck with this day even more' but knowing that it could have been... Comfort really isn't your strong suit, you know that?"  
  
"I know."   
  
There's a moment of silence. Rare in this particular company, but he can almost _feel_ Eddie thinking. Not in the old way, the way of ka-tet and thoughts stirring just beside your own and sometimes lonely, never alone. No. But he can almost feel it, anyway; the small, nimble gears of Eddie's mind grinding frantically together. Taking in the facts of the situation and processing those into thoughts.  It feels as if Roland could almost touch them, and maybe he _could_ \--

No. The boy - _Jake_ -  didn't he make it a habit to never touch the mind of another, except in need? Roland can do no less. _Should_ do no less.  

"Am I going to forget again?"   
  
It's not the question Roland was expecting. "Pardon?"

"After Suze..." He seemed to think a moment, then shrugged. " _Got here_ , she said she'd explain everything. But by the time we got home, we'd both totally forgotten. It wasn't until later I even remembered there'd been something there _to_ forget." He shakes his head, frowning at the street in front of them. "We don't talk about it. It's like it just... slips away. Out of my mind. But sometimes... she forgets things. Doesn't know things. Stuff everyone knows.  She doesn't talk about her family. Well, she does, but it's like... not like they're dead, you know? Just like they're... not here. They're _not_ dead, are they?" He lifts a hand, pressing its fingertips to his temple. His breathing's sped up.

"Eddie," Roland starts. He doesn't know how to finish.  How likely is it that Eddie and Susannah both ended up here, in the same time? In the same world, and close enough at that to find one another. That they should then both forget they'd lived anywhere other than here, it's as if... But no, there was that signpost. 119. Ka was back in his life again - if it had ever left -

" _Don't_ fucking tell me you're not gonna' tell me!" Eddie's voice, sharp with something on the path to hysteria, cuts through Roland's thought. "I'm sick of that shit! Just, just... The moment you came back, the moment I saw you, it just... It started all coming back, and you can't tell me there's not a reason for that!" Eddie thumps the wheel in front of him, and the machine around them swerves very slightly. Roland should have seen this coming, cut through it before it got this bad. Neither of them are in a state to have this conversation, but if they were, they wouldn't need to have it.

"Eddie." No. No, maybe once he could have done that, snapped Eddie out of this with a few sharp words. but this young man in front of him is no hardened gunslinger, at least not on the surface. He's no student of Roland's, ready to be pushed into reason, and Roland is not his dinh, to order Eddie into calm. "Breathe," Roland says instead. His voice, this time, is quieter. Slow, oozing honey rather than the snap of a whip. "Breathe in. Hold. Then breathe out."

"What?" Eddie glances at him, then back at the street, then back again at Roland. His impending hysteria seems to have turned into confusion. Not the precise target Roland had been aiming for, but effective. "You really..." Eddie shakes his head, rubs a hand over his mouth. Roland hears him take a couple of slow, deep breaths.

"God, we're a pair, aren't we?" It's not really a question, and Roland doesn't reply. Just continues to watch, patiently. 

"No, really," Eddie says, as if continuing a conversation they hadn't actually been having. "If I don't get some sort of explanation pretty soon, I'm gonna'... I don't know. I don't even know."

"Are-" Roland stops, starts again. "Who's at your home? This isn't a conversation I'd have more than once." He doesn't think for long about that - if he can't even bring himself to say their names out loud there's not much hope for what's coming,  but Roland trusts in his own ability to improvise.

"I don't know, uh... Jake had this test today, Suze was going to take him out for pizza if he did well. I was going to meet them," Eddie adds that last cautiously, eying him. Roland had shuddered when he'd heard Jake's name, just a little, and there's no way Eddie had missed it.

Roland turns a blind gaze toward the window, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "I'd meet them at your home, if I could. This'll be best done in private."

"Yeah, I'll lure my family into my home so the crazy stranger can chop them up into itty bitty pieces. No problem, sir, anything else?"

Roland just _looks_ at him.

 "Yeah, yeah, I know you wouldn't. It's just..." He shrugs.

"A joke. I know." Eddie's way of dealing with the stress. Roland _does_ know. Being with Eddie, with Eddie's speech and his habits and his quick, darting thoughts, it's as dizzying now as it was when Eddie confronted him in the park. Eddie's lain beside him and with him, called him father and friend and son-of-a-bitch, and every time it ends. Every time. He's seen Eddie die so many times that now he's found him again, Roland realizes a part of him's expecting that old pattern to be completed, though there's no longer any quest to cling to in the wake of that grief. He's expecting the motor-carriage to turn over and send a shard of glass through Eddie's eye and into his brain, he's expecting to make it to Eddie's house unscathed only for Eddie to be shot in the face the moment he steps out, he's expecting... A million things. More than his paltry, underfed imagination could conceive but you don't need imagination when you've got memories. Roland breathes, and breathes, and breathes.

"Hey, do we do this often?" The question jars with Roland's current train of thought in a particularly unpleasant way and he starts, turning to Eddie with wide eyes.

"Sorry," says Eddie, looking worried again. "Didn't mean to interrupt, uh... whatever you were thinking, there. It's just, do we usually do the whole 'I joke and you totally fail to respond' thing a lot? Because that feels familiar."

"It should," Roland manages, and stares at his knees.

"And Susannah. And Jake. They're involved too, aren't they? I mean, really involved. As much as me."

Roland realizes he's shaking his head, and he wonders why. They _are_ involved. They all are. "Yes," he says. He stills himself, stares straight ahead. "More than you know."

"That's--!" Eddie stops himself, pauses a moment. "That's the whole _problem_ , and you just-" He stops again, sighs. "I'll stop by the house first. If they're not there, they'll be at the bus stop."

"You know," he continues, when it's clear Roland isn't going to reply. "Suze's memory isn't the only thing that's been weird. Sometimes I'll turn around to talk to the person behind me, _sure_ I'm about to look into a pair of these pale blue eyes... but there's no one there.  But the thing is, no one I know has eyes that shade. Not like that." He glances over, meeting Roland's gaze for a moment. "Just you." 

"It's the reason I asked if Suze put you up to something, back there. She's the only person who knows. The resemblance really is uncanny." His smile is satisfied, knowing. The smile of a man who knows his aim is true. "Except it isn't, is it? It's not uncanny. It's _you_. I've been waiting for _you_."

If Roland hadn't already been sure that this was the Eddie he'd been looking for, that would do it. He'd been wondering, tailing Eddie earlier, what he'd do if Eddie had turned and looked at him and then just... walked by. An Eddie whose gaze passed over Roland without seeing, without knowing.  But he doesn't have to find out. He'd gotten lucky - extraordinarily lucky. (Except it wasn't luck, not really, and Roland wants to be happy about this, thinks he probably should, but if Eddie's house-number is nineteen Roland suspects he might shoot something. Or would, if he could.)

Roland thinks a moment more over Eddie's words, lets them sink into him. "And I you, I think. If you'll have me. If you'll all have me."

Eddie must see something on Roland's face then, because he straightens, his voice becomes sure and sharp. "Just point me toward whoever made you think you don't deserve this. Say the name, so I can start kicking ass."

Despite everything, Roland feels the corners of his mouth start to curl up. "So you can ride out to defend my honor?"

"In a Mississippi minute. Just call me Sir Eddie, here to protect all tall, dark and rugged damsels in distress."

Roland leans his temple against the cool glass next to his head. He watches the world outside go by, feels his smile widen very, very slightly, and doesn't respond. Eddie doesn't push, and the rest of the ride goes by in silence.

The motor carriage slows as they near a group of small houses, one of which must be Eddie's. Roland tries to promise himself he won't make a spectacle, not like his meeting with Eddie earlier. This is about them, after all, and the terrible knowledge he's going to share. The knowledge they might decide they don't want, not once they begin to understand it.  It's a promise to himself that Roland can't quite manage to make. They slow even more, and if Roland didn't know better, he'd think these last few seconds had turned into a hundred years.

"I'm going to go inside first and see if they're still there. If they are, I'll come out and get you." Eddie doesn't go right away, though. He waits, looks at Roland as if he wants to say something more. He doesn't. What he does is reach out, lays a hand on the back of Roland's neck, keeps it there for one second. Two. Then he leaves, shutting the door behind him, and Roland watches until he disappears inside.

Another hundred years must pass, but Roland's only had time to consider and then decide against planning out what's coming before Eddie returns. Eddie opens the door for Roland. Roland rises. They walk in silence. There are birds singing, a distant door slamming, people shouting at one another in the distance. He hears all that, but at the same time it's as if the whole world is muted. Roland's no stranger to this feeling. He welcomes it. It's the only familiar thing about this whole situation. It's a dim comfort, but one that steadies him, just a little.

Eddie opens the front door.

The sight in front of him is impossible. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Absolutely impossible.

They both gasp. Susannah drops her purse. "Oh my god," she says.

"I- Who-" says Jake. He looks stricken. Almost pained. The small, golden dog sitting at his heel starts wagging its squiggle of a tail so hard its whole hind end starts to wobble.

 Eddie looks over all of them. "I think we'd better sit down," he says. He leads them out of the hallway and into a small, comfortable looking room. The boy is the only one who sits. The dog leaps up next to him and Susannah, who is sitting already, rolls her chair to his other side and stares at Roland. Roland breathes out slowly, working to stare back. Eddie stands by the doorway, as if making sure no one decides to run.

"I think you know my face." Roland begins. He glances at the doorway. "If Eddie is any indication, I think you know it very well." He walks slowly closer, stopping to face Susannah and sitting heavily. "You deserve an explanation, but I... I don't know that this is a story I can tell. Not without help. Ask your questions."  

Eddie leaves the doorway to lean next to Susannah, against the arm of one of the couches. "Why now? It's been at least, what, a year since Susannah got here?" He looks to her for confirmation and she raises her eyebrows, nods a little. It's an easy, silent communication Roland must have seen a thousand times before. Something reaches into Roland's chest and twists.  "So why now?" Eddie continues. "Why make us wait all this time?"

"I didn't choose the time." Roland leans forward, sets his elbows on his knees, rubs at his face. "I'm surprised it's only been a year."

"That ain't no kind of answer and you know it." Susannah's brow is furrowed, her lips pursed. "If you got something to say, just _say_ it." Roland raises his eyebrows and, for perhaps the first time, almost smiles at the other woman. "It's a fair demand, Detta. I'll start again." Susannah - and it _is_ Susannah again, now - doesn't respond, and her eyes are very wide. A blonde head turns in the corner of Roland's eye, staring at Susannah, but Roland doesn't focus on it.

"This is where - and when -  The--" Roland's voice cuts out and he frowns, continues. "The Tower sent me. The Dark Tower." He studies the two faces in his view, and sees something dawning on both of them. Good. "At the end of my quest, I'd expected... I don't know. To climb to the top of the tower, and then... Do you remember my horn? My old horn?" He'd carried it on his belt once the mule had died, sometimes on the strap of his purse,  and Eddie had always wanted to know why he carried it everywhere if he never blew the damned thing. But before that he hadn't thought of it in years, carried it nowhere because he'd left it on Jericho Hill to rot with the last of his friends, and Eddie had never seen it at all. This shouldn't be working, shouldn't it be tearing at his mind the same Jake's death had? Jake's death, non-death, the constantly arguing voices. There are no voices now, but he wonders if the ocean of badly overlapping memories isn't tearing at his mind, just the same.

"I... I don't know." Eddie moves to the other end of the couch, the free end, and sits heavily. He looks to Susannah with a frown. A second later they turn back to him, both shaking their heads. "I don't know," Eddie repeats. "Is it important?"

"I climbed the tower. I blew the horn. Then I... I think--" He thinks a moment, then gives up on trying to sort that memory into words. "Everything changed."

"What do you mean?" If Roland had been anyone else he would have flinched. The voice came from the side, from that space at which he is not looking. "And why won't you look at me? I'm here!"

Roland looks up, helpless. Jake's face is the same. Drawn with anger, distress. As it should have been, when he'd neared death; as anyone's would have been. Then, Jake had been calm. More so than Roland.

Jake regains a hint of that calm, watching him now. Seems more confused than anything. "I died, didn't I?"

Roland says nothing. He thinks maybe his face is answering for him.

"I..." Jake sits back, rubbing a hand across his chest. The dog stretches its neck to lick at his arm. "That explains some things." Jake's chest is moving evenly, in and out. Calm. Whole. It'd looked whole then, too. If you didn't look too closely. Jake's mouth twists; it looks a little like he's going to throw up. Eddie leans over, rubbing at his back, and Roland watches steadily.

Eddie looks up, catches sight of Roland's face, and his expression turns instantly from soothing concern to scowl. "Oh yeah, go on and let the kid know how much you care. Jeez, it's no wonder none of us remember you, if you were always like this."

There's a rush of something, something not much like curiosity; should he have left these people to their lives? His friends? His old friends, dead friends, has he tramped into the clearing at the end of their path and trampled their rest? The feeling, that not-quite curiosity, is so urgent suddenly that it takes him a moment to notice that he's dizzy, leaning forward, elbows slipping on his knees. His old, dead friends, dead once, twice, back and gone again, back and gone, and here now to do... what? Which death was this, again? His fists are curled at his temples, a figure's rising in the seat across and he squints at it, draws a sharp breath through his nose. Cort's in his head yelling something, and notes he's never heard Cort's voice sound so far away. There's a voice in his ear, too, and this one after a moment fades into coherence.

"...buddy? I'm an idiot, you know me, I just, I just talk sometimes, and I didn't mean it. Not really. Just forgot for a second." There's a hand on Roland's back, like there had been at the park. "You gonna talk to me? Come on, man, you know I can go on all night like this if someone doesn't stop me, all you have to do is tell me you're okay and I'll stop." He waits a moment. 

"Keep talking," Roland rasps.

"Really?" Eddie glances behind him, then back forward. "Uh, okay. What'd you want to hear? How about, uh... Hey Jake, how was that test today? You nailed it, right?"

"Um..." Jake pulls his gaze from Roland, blinks, straightens. "Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we won't get the grades back for a while, but I think I did." He looks from Eddie to Roland again. "Are you alright?"

Roland takes him in for a moment. Solemn, like Roland always had been, and bright, like he hadn't. No longer sick with memories of his own death but focused on Roland, concerned. Still so young, after everything.

"...Yes," Roland says. "I'm fine." 

"Are we sure this is fair?" Roland realizes with a wash of shame that he'd forgotten Susannah was there. He watches her as she moves forward, peering at Roland's face intently. "To make you relive all this, just so we can have some answers?"

"You deserve answers." Roland shakes his head, studies her.  

"But not at your expense." She takes a breath, then looks as if she's come to some sort of decision. "Do we really need to know all this? Right now?" She's asking the others now, looking around at them. "Now that he's here, it feels... less important, somehow. You know?"

Roland shifts his gaze to the other two, and can see that they do. The three (four?) are ka-tet again for sure, broken but well-mended here in this cozy little home they've made together. The realization warms him, softens something.

"Roland?" She's turned toward him once more, leans forward and smiles gently. "You look tired, sugar. What do you say to some rest?" She raises her left hand toward his right and waits, patient. His hand's bigger than hers but somehow fits perfectly, her graceful, bony fingers curled around the back of his hand, brushing over his weathered skin.

She leads him out of their main room and down a hallway. The others are trailing after them, their silence matching well the sudden quiet on the inside of his head. He hadn't noticed how loud it had been, all that worry. All that grief. It's not gone, not precisely. But it's quiet.

In the room at the end of the hall sits a bed, low and perfectly even with the seat of Susannah's chair.  Its mattress is soft underneath him, shifting only a little when the others sit to either side. The dog doesn't follow Jake, for once - it sits instead near Roland's feet, looking up at him with steady gold eyes.

"Oy," he tries, holding his hand out. "Oy, to me."

Oy jumps up and moves under Roland's hand, allows Roland to move his fingers through his fur. It's thick, and soft. Warm.

"Good boy," Roland murmurs, and watches Oy sink down and curl up, grumbling something under his breath. Roland's smiling again, he feels it, faint and spreading slowly but real.  Some band of hard tension unlatches itself inside of him and he lays back and he doesn't weep, not yet. Just stares at the ceiling, trying to breathe and feeling the living weight of his family settling around him. If they move closer, just a little, he'll be able to feel the beat of their hearts.


End file.
